Boredom kills. Not just in stories but in life as well. When I was young I spoke of a distant future that would be enriched by callow memories of youth. For some reason it always involved sipping Jack while sitting in a rocking chair. Even then I knew that was bullshit. You can kill, maybe, an hour a week doing such, but you are still alive and require much more than forty year old stories to continue the experience. The young tend to shelve the old, even when the young are the old.
I am prone to boredom. We all are, but some much more than others, and I am too easily bored. Throughout life I have gone from one new obsession to another and, to date, I am the only one left standing. I am bedazzled with a subject for months then one day it is over. Rock collecting, astronomy and many other fiery enjoyments fell off my imagination, as did pressing wild flowers and, yes, the three week interest I had in the accordion.
That, however, is the way of children. When we become adults it is assumed that we will develop sticktoitiveness. Music has been in and out of my life for years, which makes it the Methuselah of my interests. I was keen for it from fifteen to forty then stopped listening, save for the jukebox in bars, for about ten years. It has come back only because I have given up on new music and I do not care what others think about that.
Writing has a strange place with me. It is immune to boredom but it has never been an obsession except when doing it. That is the difference, mainly the other stuff was heightened by my imagination of it, while writing has never had to pass the test. It is just there, something I can do (good and bad). But I didn’t take it seriously for a long time. John Boy Walton is to blame for that. On The Waltons it was clearly made that you must go to college to be a writer the same way you go to dental school to be a rapist, I mean dentist. It wasn’t until later that I finally learned that most people attend college to get drunk and have sex. John Boy lied.
Dorothy Parker stopped her schooling at age fourteen, probably the same for Shakespeare, and Capote didn’t finish high school. In fact the more I read the more I understood that writers are often smarter about life than are college students. You do not need to pay tuition to get drunk and have sex.
This was an eye opener.
To combat boredom I read at least three books at the same time (no, wiseass, not literally). I also have all kinds of stories and articles and even books of my own going at once. I counted and there’s over forty of them, but I only work on three at a time. I would have to not open anything new and write well into my hundreds to finish the stuff I have going now. That does not bother me. I still open new stuff. Changing constantly is useful against boredom. And so is humour, not the silly TV stuff, but actual almost organic humour that is found in the crash and thud of being.
Drugs and alcohol are never boring but it’s a shame they turn on you, how they wear out their welcome, but they are not wholly bad. I have always said “forget moderation.” That’s the same as telling your spouse that you are willing to love her/him to a responsible degree but no further. If I loved someone I would want it to be reckless and mad. Nilla wafer love affairs, I imagine, are boring. Yet they lead to fewer restraining orders.
Winning the battle against boredom is why writers tend to live long lives, nowadays, at any rate. Also, effective treatment against tuberculosis and syphilis has raised the mean death age for writers as well. Moreover, writers seldom drink themselves to death today, the way O. Henry did (who was found as good as dead in a hotel room with nine empty jugs of whisky under the bed). Oh, we drink just as much as ever, but evolution has toughened up our livers. Call me a bigot, but I do not think that a person can truly write about the darkness in the human race (Ann Frank the exception) without having had some experience in alcohol, ongoing or in the past. There’s a special feeling that comes from waking in bed with someone whose name you do not remember. That sort of thing opens a lot of mental doors.
Suicide, though spoke of often is not as rife among writers. It has been a long time since Plath, Woolf, Hemingway and John Kennedy Toole voluntarily checked out. Musicians, so it seems, have taken over that department. Mental illness and boredom make a lethal mixture. You cannot do much about the first but the second can be alleviated if you are willing to use whatever mental illness and/or addiction you have as a positive resource to learn from; do not hide it as a dark shame that you have let people tell you how to think about. But this comes with a risk, people have their own problems, yours had better be interesting.
I think that there is an extra allegory to be found in Hawthorne’s nearly two hundred year old story Young Goodman Brown. For those of you who have forgotten it, Goodman went into the forest surrounding Salem around the time of the witch trials and discovered that every last Puritan in the village, himself included, was at best a basic hypocrite while most were evil hypocrites. The allegory extends to writing; you go into the woods full of writers thinking some to be superhuman geniuses and come out with the hideous realization that they, like you, were/are insane slobs with dark secrets. The job is to realize we are all insane slobs and accept it. I, for one, am rather comforted when I read about the “shortcomings” of famous writers. Twain (another non-college goer) had a terrible temper, Capote, when drunk, was a vicious little bastard, Dickens had family troubles and I would not be surprised if it were discovered that Shakespeare was not a fella to trust alone with your wife (nor the wife with Will). It is just fine by me that all are human, it gives our temporary moments of godliness increased esteem in my eyes.
Hmmm, again this part appears that it will end like smashing into a tree with Ethan Fromme at the wheel. Even a fancy literary comment fails to make the sudden segue from the opening topic to the wonderful Week That Was smoother. Alas, we carry our crosses uphill and the best you can hope for is an ending similar to the one the repentant thief got from Jesus. Barabbas? Or maybe that was just a movie. Hmmm, even a biblical anecdote fails to decrease the jolt. Oh well. So brushing this mishmash of pseudo philosophical musings aside, it is now time to re-visit the six wonderful performers of this Week That Was. They are far from dull.
Dale Barrigar Williams appeared on the second Sunday of the month, as is his habit. He knows about drugs and booze (enough to quit them) and is extremely well educated, but he hasn’t let any of that get in the way of his humanity. This month in his Eliot Behind the Mask, Dale once again merges his humanity with his PhD and presents TS Eliot as a real person and not a mummified great of the past. This is a perfect example of going out into the woods with great writers and seeing one toss a smoke bomb!
Monday delivered Man With a Shopping Cart by Tom Bentley-Fisher. Poor William has an obsession with shopping carts. But soon enough they fill with hard, even brutal memories. The metaphor should be obvious but Tom enriches the tale with images both wonderful and frightening. You can’t fit this one into a box.
Tuesday brought a second story that fled expectations that built within it. The First Thing She Notice Disappear Was a Kangaroo by Michael Degnan leaves a great many questions for the reader to consider. Michael also presents a well written, believable POV for the seven-year-old MC.
Wednesday’s Tilda the Ice Maiden and her life in the tundra 1785 bce by Linclon Hayes, opens with a rare, once in a lifetime sentence; the sort of sentence all writers crave to create. And the lives up to its opening; it hooks you into a world of surprises, as you might deduce from looking at the title.
There is a fantastic moment in A Eulogy For Us by Darleine Abellard, that catches you off guard and lifts this much higher than other funeral tales. The entire work is top rate, but the summation of grief towards the end raises this one to a new level of excellence.
We closed the week with Everybody Prefers Iceberg Lettuce by Genevieve Goggin. You know an author has done well when she reminds you, in spirit, of another writer. Here I got Anita Loos in mind, who created hectic and entertaining Lorelei Lee (played by Marilyn Monroe in a film that had to water down some of the wilder stuff in Loos’ prose). A century lies between the two writers but this one has the same special elan.
Congratulations to the Ladies and Gentlemen of the week. They kept our minds active and carried us pleasantly into the future.
Yes, I Close With Yet Another List
Sometimes I wonder how it all began. When did I figure that list making was for me? I think the David Letterman Show reinforced my list making in the 80’s, but I was already doing such before I first saw his nightly Top Ten. I do not recall making lists as a child, but ever since I was around twenty I’ve been writing them. Could be I was abducted by aliens way back when and instilled with a desire to make lists for reasons as unexplainable as the “Sacred Mysteries” of the Christian church. Who’s to say?
Regardless of the inspiration, today’s list is dedicated to short story writers of yore who often produced works well worth remembering. This list has been up before, but it contained other items. Some are still famous, some are unfairly buried by time. As always, please add your own suggestion.
- A Pair of Silk Stockings-Kate Chopin
- The Tell Tale Heart-Edgar Allen Poe
- Victoria-Ogden Nash
- The Egg-Sherwood Anderson
- Harrison Burgeron-Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
- Jefty Turns Five-Harlan Ellison
- A White Heron-Sarah Orne Jewett
- The Killers-Ernest Hemingway
- An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge-Ambrose Bierce
- Leaving the Yellow House-Saul Bellow
Leila
This week a bluesy song from (incredibly) forty year ago
literally stories 
Classic short stories:
“The Endless Now” by Leila Allison.
“The Grave” by Katherine Anne Porter.
“The Life You Save May Be Your Own” by Flannery.
“The Story of an Hour” by Kate Chopin.
“The Gift of the Magi” by O. Henry.
“Goodbye, My Brother” by John Cheever.
“The Man of the Crowd” by Edgar Allan Poe.
“Wakefield” by Nathaniel Hawthorne.
“The Piazza” by Herman Melville.
“Rip Van Winkle” by Washington Irving.
“The Battler.” Ernest Hemingway.
THANK YOU LEILA!
THE DRIFTER
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Hi Dale
Well well, that is a great list and I am happy to be able to say I have read nearly all of them at least once! (Except the Allison character, who often crashes parties above her status. But she thanks you!)
The Porter story is a great one to remember. Ernest excelled in the form, and pound for pound he might be the greatest. O. Henry has a fond place, Gift of the Magi and Last Leaf. So much great old stuff.
Leila
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L
Yes! Hemingway as a short story writer is hard to beat.
His really brief story “The End of Something” is far more powerful than the entirety of his novel Across the River and Into the Trees, which treats the same subject in two hundred pages instead of five (much less effectively).
“A Clean, Well-Lighted Place” is almost as profound as the Book of Jonah in the Bible: both of them being around 1,000 words long.
And Ernie’s short story “The Three-Day Blow” explores alcoholism better in ten pages than almost all full-length memoirs on the same topic manage to accomplish.
It’s no wonder that both Bukowski and HST chose Ernie as their number one main man.
D
PS
The vast majority of his short story masterpieces are 3,000 words or less; and usually, much less.
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Hi Dale
Yes, Hemingway brings to mind a dozen or more great short works while others ringin two or three.Also happy 105th to Charles Bukowski
Leila
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LA
Just want to say again how great this essay is. It’s great the first time, and when one reads it for second and third times, its wisdom really begins to sink in even more than the first time. Truly great creative personal writing that deserves to have time spent on it. And because it’s so good, in terms of well-written and in terms of the soul of the writer, it will survive all of us.
THE DRIFTER
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Hi Dale
I think I found a way to reply to your latest comment, but on WP who can say. I just want to thank you for your constant support. I truly appreciate it beyond expression!
Leila
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My Back Pages Bob Dylan
My life is so boring. Editor is dragging me to Sunset City crying and screamng.
Literary talk always leaves me behind. Mathematician, accidental writer (what to do when I lose mobility – has a preview in 2014).
May write more later. Big branch blocking driveway.
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Hi Doug
Good luck with branch. A few blocks away a tree gave up a very large branch that landed on a parked car overnight. A thrill a minute.
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That happens a lot with our big NW conifers that are drying out. Cleared enough to get in and out of driveway. Some work left for professionals.
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Leila
A total treat. Filled with the crash and thud of being.
I’ve spent a lifetime uselessly searching for the boredom I felt all through it among the creatures of the world to no effect. It was just me — alone. Each squirrel I met, every dog and horse I encountered, no bird nor reptile joined me in my bone deep boredom, so natural were they and everything about them. Even my fellow humans, if bored, seemed more exhausted or troubled than bored. No shit.
And, great list! But I never did one of them with my freshman students. Every short story we did could be both read, got, and written about in one period. Otherwise, I’d be staring at approx. 20 lifeless faces. Doing what? You know. Being bored. Shirly Jackson. Jamaica Kincade. Ray Carver. Lanston. Lots of them worked! All in one period. All to make us — all of us — feel smart and unbored.
I never met a cat who needed to feel smart! No shit. — gerry
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Hello Gerry
I am pleased you have achieved immunity to boredom! You are right, animals (except over sensitive domesticated ones) do not show boredom. After all a bored, apathetic creature will either starve or wind up on the menu!
Also, I like the way you kept your classroom dullness free. Of course the subject helped, but there is not a thing on earth a human being cannot ruin–but the opposite is true as well.
Thank you!
Leila
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Excellent post and recap. I feared I might be bored when I retired, but thankfully that’s been far from the case. LS is a contributor to that. I attended a Truman Capote reading long ago. He tripped and nearly fell walking to the podium. And then gave an excellent reading. I think his current book at the time was Answered Prayers.
To the list, I’d add:
Everything That Rises Must Converge by Flannery O’Connor
Hands by Sherwood Anderson about the joy of writing
Hills Like White Elephants by Hemingway. I like how it leaves so much unsaid.
Learning to Fall by Leila Allison. This might be shameless pandering, but I love that story.
Many, many others by Many, many others.
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Hello David
Thank you as always! I just re-read O’Connor’s work recently. Got a bunch of collections for about a dollar apiece on Kindle. She is just as great today as she was during her sadly brief life.
Take care!
Leila
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Leila
I was feeling a little tired today until I read your prose and now I’ve got my mojo back! That’s the virtue of great writing, it stirs the spirit, fights back the boredom, gets one going again.
Boredom is terrifying. Enough of it can lead to suicide and does lead to suicide in some cases. It’s scary, too, to think that we in the USA have now created what is (to date) probably the most boring society of all time (along with Russia, China, and other contenders), in our case swallowed by generic (and unfunny) advertisements and bad (and not funny) entertainment like bad tv shows and computer games and stupid, mind-numbing things to do on your phone. One feels tragically sorry for the youth of America but at the same time, when the going gets tough, the tough either get going or fall justifiably by the wayside.
Ernest Hemingway never went to college at all (to the despair of both parents). Charles Bukowski, Henry Miller, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Bob Dylan and William Faulkner all attended college, for a very little while, but nobody even came close to graduating. From what I know of English Departments in the USA right now, it’s BAD for kids to go to college, not good: ESPECIALLY if they want to be writers. And if you do go, study anywhere else but in the English Departments, at least until they come to their senses again.
Back soon with a short story list because I want to do it justice!
Dale
PS
Herman Melville wrote, “A whale ship was my Yale and my Harvard” (because he didn’t go to college).
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Hello Dale
I believe that colleges (at least the arts) tend to lean left, which makes sense. But I also believe that they should be wide open to all expressions. There’s too much politics involved today and I feel it narrows student’s right to express freely without fearing the modern day equivalent to a stoning.
Thank you for your insights. Always top notch.
Leila
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Great post as always, mate. (I’m in Liverpool mode ATM) I have not suffered hugely from boredom over the years, which is just as well because Riyadh for a woman is probably what my dad would have said was the epitoom of boredom. I think reading and writing have been my rescue over time and also laziness!
A huge admission here but I don’t read short stories – the ones on the site yes, of course and many of them are quite simply wonderful but I’ve never been drawn to collections and the like. a few of Stephen Kings and for some weird reason The Truth About Pycraft by HG Wells always pops into my mind when anyone says short stories. I guess I was about twelve when I read it. I have just started reading a novella and it’s because it’s by Mick Heron who is my favourite author at the moment and I’ve read all the Slough House and Zoe Boehm books. See butterfly brain – can’t keep it still enough for it to become bored. As for college and writing courses – well as you already know they were never in my life. I don’t know whether that would have made any difference, probably not – my brain has limits, I know this. Jeez, I need to stop rabbiting. Its so hot here it’s frying my innards. I’ll go now – probably eat chilled melon. Thanks again for a great roundup. dd
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Hello Diane
Thank you! The world is getting to be like a pizza oven anymore! We used to have mild summers, which were a source of annoyance for some. But now that we all experience the equator those days are missed!
Enjoy the melon and a good drink(s)!
Leila
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Hi Leila,
I never have a problem with boredom unless I’m working, then I’m bored for as long as I’m there.
There are certain people who bore me but I judge myself for not being able to ignore them whilst talking to them relevantly and thinking on something else.
I decided to think outside the box regarding short stories as I only have three that I’ve mentioned before. (‘The Devil’s Game – Poul Anderson, ‘The Flowering Of The Strange Orchis – H.G.Wells and ‘Enoch’ by Robert Bloch)
So I came up with these.
‘The Black Isle’ – Herge
‘Preacher’- Garth Ennis
‘Little Clause And Big Clause’ – Hans Christian Anderson
‘The Boy Who Cried Wolf’ – Aesop
‘The Tinderbox’ – Hans Christian Anderson
‘Godfather Death’ – Grimms
‘Brer Rabbit And The Briar Patch’ – Joel Chandler
HAH! Just realised, I read a lot of shorts when I was a kid!!
Excellent as usual!!!
Hugh
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Hello Hugh
I have completely forgotten about Hans Christian Anderson. He was all over my childhood then vanished with the gate receipts–or maybe that was Beatrix Potter…
I admire the ability to avoid boredom unless it is thrust upon you. Boredom leads to only bad things and should always be avoided.
Thank you as always!
Leila
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I’ll have said the equivalent of this before (& why not given I’ve often thought it) but you could make an empty suitcase interesting, endow a sock with charm. So Boredom’s no sweat – & is here given wings. (How John Boy Lied: what a fine title to something that would make.) Yes sticktoitiveness comes in many forms, some seemingly more chaotic than others. Gorgeous phrase that “Methusaleh of my interests.” Your musings on alco-narco matters deeply sane. As a youth I more or less made hero of Dostoevsky’s Marmeladov & went on to slur loudly for the next 30 years, making virtue of squalor, self-abasement, rage etc . I knew my Artaud from my elbow sure enough & wasn’t shy of showing it. On your recommendation will go find Hawthorne’s tale of Young Goodman Brown. Funny – or not at all funny how foibles (to use coy word) hitherto considered part of the human deal now grounds for dismissal/cancellation. How dare Florence Nightingale not have had on her 19th c. shoulders a 21st c. head? Rimbaud as wrecker of the Literary Soiree is one thing, Rimbaud the colonialist entrepreneur is something (someone) else. Pity about Celine’s odious personality, Beethoven’s table manners etc etc . . . Saying which is all too obvious. In his essay on Dickens, Orwell cites Dickens’s mistreatment of his wife, adding that it “no more invalidates his work than the second-best bed invalidates Hamlet.” As for Shakespeare, he has it our lives are of a “mingled yarn”. Bad news for many, that. As to short stories I’ll add another ten:
Sleep It Off, Lady : Jean Rhys
The Cobbler Blondeau : Bonaventure Des Periers
The Dancing Partner : Jerome K. Jerome
A Little Cloud ; James Joyce
Acid (all 9 sentences of it) : James Kelman
Torture Through Hope : Villiers De L’Isle Adam
Boot : Carys Davies
The Walker-Through-Walls : Marcel Ayme
The New Dress : Virginia Woolf
Family Man – & just about any other story from Annie Proulx’s Fine Just The Way It Is
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Geraint
Oh your compliments are lovely and I recommend you to Zod (in honor of Terence Stamp, who died this weekend). I appreciate your sincerity and agree heartily with the let people be human without perceived bad deeds causing elimination. If that were a good idea no one would make history.
Your list is excellent. I like seeing things I have yet to read.
Thank you!
Leila
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Great post, Leila. Nerdy confession: I’m never bored if I have a book handy.
To those previously listed (a number of which I’ve marked for future reading) I’d like to add:
Borges: Tlon, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius
O. Henry: The Cop and the Anthem
M.R. James: Oh, Whistle and I’ll come to You, My Lad
bw, mick
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Thank you Mick
Great additions to the list (I will have to locate the last one!)
I have noticed that book reading engages the mind while (unless a Kindle) gazing into a screen does not. Of course that depends on the object.
Thank you!
Leila
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Hi Leila
Writing does seem to fill the boredom or whatever passes for boredom. Reading helps.
Wasting time and boredom might be two different things. Watching TV feels like a waste, but not always boring. Reading doesn’t feel wasteful if I’m trying to learn the craft of writing.
Writing feels like an opportunity cost. When I have other pressing things to do.
Christopher
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Hi Christopher
Yes writind and readind are active. I won’t go as far to say that TV has melted a lot of brains but I won’t deny it either. I think it depends on the person. If you constantly examine what you watch critically you hold your mind; swallow all you see without question, well, you are what you eat.
Thank you!
Leila
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Your enlightening and funny post really does stave off boredom! It made me think of the chilling and sad short story, “On the Divide” by Willa Cather, wherein the MC is so despondent and bored he graduates from drinking mere whiskey to grain alcohol. Ugh! You feel for this farmer longing for love despite his shocking way of securing it. Many of Willa Cather’s stories tell of the first European settlers in the plain states, so brave and desperate to work land that she writes was never meant to be farmed. They’re filled with poetic, yet no-nonsense observations of harsh pioneer life. Sorry for this delayed comment!
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Hi Susan
Thank you for dropping by. Yes Willa’s stuff still holds up. As does Eudora Weltly (I never spell her name right). A great many women authors shone and still shine!
Leila
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I’d add “A Good Man Is Hard To Find” by Flannery 0 Connor to that short story list. Plus Raymond Carver “What We talk about When We Talk About Love.” I’m never bored, but I may be in denial. Indeed, today writer’s shadow sides are not forgiven, in Canada writers Alice Munro, Joseph Boyden, and WP Kinsella among others have been cancelled due to perceived moral or other transgressions.
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Hello Harrison
O’Connor is always a great addition. Isn’t it wonderful to live in a time with so many perfect people who have the right to place judgment on people they do not and can not know? Some say there’s a heavy price for that sort of thing, down the line.
For me boredom isn’t a lack of things to do, but whether I want to. The old Bartleby question.
Take care and thanks again!
Leila
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